It Was.. Humongous!

[Myuu]

I was shopping at Petsmart today with money I got from christmas, and I went over to the fish section and saw the bamboo shrimp. I saw a bunch of regular ones, but there were two gigantic shrimp that had fans like a bamboo shrimp. It was probably a little more than twice the size of the other shrimp. What were these shrimp? I didn't have a camera on me at the time, so no pictures.

And I have another question; if your bamboo shrimp stops filter-feeding and searches for food on the substrate, does that mean they're not getting enough food from the filter flow?

 

[Iron Man]

Did they look like the smaller bamboo shrimp? Bamboo shrimp get huge.

 

[three-fingers]

Sounds like a giant african filter shrimp, i've only seen small ones in my lfs' .

 

[raptorrex]

I was shopping at Petsmart today with money I got from christmas, and I went over to the fish section and saw the bamboo shrimp. I saw a bunch of regular ones, but there were two gigantic shrimp that had fans like a bamboo shrimp. It was probably a little more than twice the size of the other shrimp. What were these shrimp? I didn't have a camera on me at the time, so no pictures.

And I have another question; if your bamboo shrimp stops filter-feeding and searches for food on the substrate, does that mean they're not getting enough food from the filter flow?

three-fingers may be right, i have not seen any fan shrimp, that get much bigger than a Bamboo shrimp, these things also get the name Vampire shrimp and 15-18cm is about full size

I must admit i think you are right, about the floor feeding thing. though that is just from my observations, not from any species knowledge. having said that they all have different personalitys, some do just like to go for a walk, and some just hang and feed. What i can say is they love to hang over a air stone, tails in the air. and like it more if they have a wall or some such to hide behind.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Sounds like a giant african filter shrimp, i've only seen small ones in my lfs' .

They're also known as armoured shrimp, seen some pretty large specimens in one of my lfs's once before (they were around 15cm long)

 

[andywg]

Sounds very much like the shrimp we have (sold under yet another common name of Cameroon Armoured Shrimp)

The males are a blue colour with the females looking paler and occasionally darkening up (to resemble the pic posted above).

As far as I can see the scientific name is Atyopsis gabonensis and 15cm (6") will be close to maximum size. We got ours at around the 5" size. Ours employ both filter feeding and substrate checking with frozen prawn being a favourite of some of them (and the bamboo shrimp).

 

[Myuu]

I'd say it looked like the giant african fan shrimp, but more yellow in color. I think I forgot to mention that the shrimps fans were still about the same size as the other shrimps'.